A Mommy Sanity Move

I never thought I would say this because we’ve never had an ‘extra’ room before, but we now have a play room. Or rec room, or entertainment room. Or whatever we want to call it. Originally discussions regarding this room revolved around the baby’s arrival and maybe moving Hannah downstairs so she could still have her own room. We tried it and Hannah isn’t quite ready for that yet, but maybe in a couple years. Then we thought, well maybe a guest room. Unfortunately, we have a narrow stairway access to this room and can’t get our sofabed down to it, we barely were able to get this short sofa in. Eventually, we may try to get some other sleeping option down here, but currently don’t want to spend the money. So . . . it is officially the playroom for now. ALL of the kids toys except one or two special ones are down here.

This makes me happy on a lot of levels.
– One, we gain back space in their bedrooms, which aren’t that large to begin with. A side note on this is that it is a lot easier to ‘send the kids to their rooms’ when they aren’t full of fun things to do.
– Two, it removes clutter from the rest of the house. Yay! Instead of toys, we now have schoolwork everywhere else! 😉
– Three, we almost always have a clean up time before bed. Because my house almost always looks like WWIII has commenced by the end of the day. However, if we don’t get to it for whatever reason, the majority of the mess is downstairs. We can focus a quick search on the upper levels and the rest of the mess is out of sight and I can just close the door and pretend it isn’t there.
– Four, the tv has been a continual discussion topic in our family. We had taken it out of the living room when we were still in AZ for various reasons, but we placed it back in the living room when we moved out here. We really don’t watch a lot, nothing mainstream. We are currently only set up for over the air and netflix (and dvds and tapes). So why have our hulking old tv taking up space in our living room and not getting used that much? Now, it is out of the way again, and we still have a comfy place to sit to watch it if we want to. 🙂
– Five, I need floor space for baby stuff. Ahhhh! I have started organizing all the ‘junk’ and remembering how big everything is from play mats to jumpers and high chairs. Now that a sofa is removed from the living room, I actually have a place to put baby on the floor. Whew!

All this to say, mommy nesting is going a little bit easier now and the kids love it!

Photos, before and after. . . click to enlarge.